Congress might have left Washington for the Independence Day recess but HOH stayed the course to keep an eye on things over the hot, humid and patriotic week. Here's a roundup of some of our favorites bits of gossip and observations while you were away.

Grassley Makes History

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, who over the past couple of years has taken shots at the History Channel for what he says is an inadequate amount of historical programming, declared recent efforts to his satisfaction. On his Twitter account, the Iowa Republican praised programming on Attila the Hun and Cleopatra.

An 'Insane' Workout

The man behind the Insanity workout, Shaun Thompson, punished lawmakers before they headed home for the recess, stopping by the Capitol to lead Republican lawmakers, including P90X acolyte Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., and Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. Twitter hashtags that followed the getaway day sweat-fest included “#gradeAbuttkicking" and "#can’tmove.”

Elizabeth Lauten, spokeswoman for Fincher, told HOH, “I’m hoping this encourages members to stay consistently engaged on Instagram and to continue to push themselves to find creative ways to reach their constituents on platforms we know that they’re using.”

How People Find HOH

And finally, every once in a while we look backstage in our Internets to see just what search terms people are using to find their way to HOH's little slice of blog heaven. As usual, we were delighted and confused. Here were some of the top, fully formed questions people plugged into their search engines to find us on the Web: